Georgia Democratic officials claim that more than 4,700 applications to vote by mail are missing in DeKalb County, a progressive-leaning county of about 753,000 people.
The New York Times confirmed with multiple sources a phone call this week when county officials reportedly acknowledged the missing applications and vowed to inform the applicants of the error.
But Sam Tillman, the chairman of the DeKalb County elections board, told the Times “there is no evidence that there are any missing or lost absentee ballot request forms.”
Tillman told The Hill that the county voter registration and elections board “is in receipt of a list, provided by the Democratic Party of Georgia, of approximately 4,700 registered voters that the party claims requested absentee ballot forms via a mailer sent out by the party.”
“After reviewing the list of names, there is evidence that the county received 48 of those voter absentee ballot request forms. All 48 of those forms have been processed,” Tillman said in a statement.
“At this time, there is no evidence that there are any missing or lost absentee ballot request forms. The Elections Department receives request forms daily and processes them within three days of receipt,” he added.
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Any voters whose applications are missing will have to re-request a ballot or vote in person. Democratic party officials told the Times they are concerned that many of those people are out of state and may not be able to request a ballot in time.
“Our message to voters is this: If you requested a vote-by-mail ballot from your county and your county did not send you a ballot, go in-person if you are able to an early voting site,” Seth Bringman, spokesman for the Democratic party of Georgia, told the Times. “We will not allow Brian Kemp’s voter suppression or mistakes by election officials to take away your right to vote.”
The Georgia Democratic Party did not immediately reply to a request for comment from The Hill.
Kemp is the GOP candidate in the state’s gubernatorial election and also currently serves as the secretary of State.
Allegations of voter suppression have plagued the Georgia gubernatorial race. Recently, the Associated Press reported that more than 53,000 voter registration applications — 70 percent of them from black voters — are on hold after failing to meet the state’s “exact match” law.
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Georgia law requires an applicant’s information on a voter registration form to exactly match the information on a federal or state database.
As secretary of State, Kemp is in charge of overseeing the vote tallying.